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Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Moore

Yes, but both had very limited things they were doing. Narc, you fight waves of the same exact characters and the main heroes were palette swaps. Pit fighter had a small roster of playable fighter as well, and the digitization process was less refined than MK, with far fewer animations per character.

The main point being made was that memory limitations at the time only allowed for so much to be done. So in MK1 and MK2, they palette swapped the ninjas to add extra characters. As those memory limitations became less of a problem, those color swaps were given more distinct designs, especially as the series moved to 3D.

Exactly.

Pitfighter sprites were 1/2 the size of the Mortal Kombat sprites, and also half the frame rate. I remember one of the 90's gaming mags doing an in-depth comparison of all the digital actor games, and comparing them. Pitfighter really was closer to Pong than anything else. Several other games had digital actors, but out of all the games that did that, only Mortal Kombat still exists today (and funny enough, they dropped the digital actors for mocap!).

Also, when they dropped the palletswapped ninjas in MK3, having finally achieved the memory allowances to allow a larger selection of characters, the fandom screamed bloody murder! So "Ultimate MK3" was released to soothe the wounded. It's kind of like the Decepticon jets. Starscream, thundercracker, skywarp, dirge, ramjet, and thrust are all basically the same toy, some with minor differences, but they get the parents (or adult fanboys) to buy the same toy 6 times... or more, now with acidstorm and sunstorm added to the mix.

So what some call "lazy programming", I call prelude to brilliant marketing savvy!